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Comment by mwill | Hacker News Reader

I see some comments here along the lines of 'this is standard, nothing to do with race'

Even if that is true (And I don't know that it is), doesn't it speak to some greater cultural problem that this man was so scared for his life, being a black man questioned by police?

It's all well and good to say "I've had this happen to me, no problems", but thats dismissing the fact that this man, and many others, fear for their life whenever they interact with the police.

(I should note that I am not American, so maybe theres things I'm missing as an outsider looking in / maybe I'm way off base)

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It's a problem that he's so scared, yes. But this particular incidents paints his fear as baseless paranoia.

This reminds me of something I pointed out elsewhere... I don't know any black people who have never had a negative, frightening interaction with police. And I have a lot of black friends, from teenagers up to men in their 60s. I've had friends arrested, had guns pointed at them, on ridiculous things (one that stands out was a friend who got arrested and roughed up for doing his laundry in his dorm).

"Baseless paranoia"? Ask any black person you know if they think this is baseless paranoia.

I don't know any people of any race who have never had a negative, frightening interaction with police.

This still doesn't make his reaction justified.

> I don't know any people of any race who have never had a negative, frightening interaction with police.

Eh, I can only speak anecdotally but almost all white people (who aren't active drug dealers) that I know haven't actually had bad experiences, modulo "the TSA at the airport patted me down!".

The single time that I've had any sort of negative interaction was when crossing the Canadian border and it was directly because my friend in the car had brown skin.

I know lots of white people who have never had a negative interaction with police. The only times I have were really when I deserved it (like coming down off a rooftop of a building where I didn't live, drunk and high, to the welcoming arms of the police. Who didn't arrest me).

It sure does: people base their emotional reactions largely on anecdotes from those around them, those they know and respect.

"I don't know any black people who have never had a negative, frightening interaction with police."

Anecdotal evidence is generally frowned upon when discussing statistics or topics in general terms.

Many lost lives paint his fear completely well founded: USA police clearly tends to kill black citizens because of race.

If someone is afraid for their life, regardless if there are objective measures for it being grounded or not, certainly casting it as baseless paranoia serves to dissuade such fears.

> certainly casting it as baseless paranoia

But that's exactly what this blog post does. It's like this is actually propaganda which was created to paint the author as paranoid.

He doesn't tell any real reasons for being afraid, he doesn't seem reasonable and rational at all. He comes to the encounter with preconceived notions and doesn't even try to doubt.

Police brutality and racism are awful issues, and posts like that do real harm because they paint them as paranoid delusions.

> He comes to the encounter with preconceived notions

This is the whole point, don't you understand?

Consider that your desire to see each encounter as a blank slate, disconnected to each other, is your privilege.

If you're black and encountering with the police, your encounter is full of decades and centuries of "preconceived notions" -- of abuses of power.

The appropriate thing for society to do about someone being in fear for their life is quite different in cases where that fear is justified from cases where that fear is baseless paranoia.

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